It has come to my attention that, to make me actually like genres that I usually stay away from, you’ve got to make them a little bit bizarre. Abra-Cooking-Dabra is the perfect example of this, taking the deckbuilder genre and turning it into a pseudo restaurant management sim with all the stresses involved. 

Abra-Cooking-Dabra, developed by Door 407, is definitely a deckbuilder at heart. You collect cards and use them to craft various dishes as requested by the strange patrons who pay you a visit, furnishing your deck with everything you need to ensure your kitchen runs smoothly. However, you somehow manage to forget that you’re playing a deckbuilder, thanks to the sheer amount of (mostly enjoyable) stress involved. 

The cat could probably lend a hand

In Abra-Cooking-Dabra, you are essentially a one-man band of a chef team, tasked with not only growing ingredients and paying for new ones, but then using those ingredients to cook dishes in various stages, and then eventually doing the dishes to make sure you have clean plates for the next customer. All of this happens while your black and white kitty companion lounges at the side of the screen, occasionally reading the newspaper, and generally judging you for your incompetence if you fail, even though he definitely could have lifted a paw to help.

As you can tell, I’m pretty salty about it. 

Admittedly, he does come in handy every so often. To buy new sauces or seeds, you need to spend the money that the customers give you for successfully delivering their meals, except the packs of cards are essentially blind packs and you never know what you’re going to get. Once you run out of earnings from meal prep, you can sell duplicate cards (or any cards really, if you’re desperate enough) for varying amounts of cash to buy more blind packs of cards. 

I’m not equipped for this

Everything that you cook in Abra-Cooking-Dabra has multiple steps to complete to make it edible. Take, for instance, Coleslaw, which requires carrots, cabbage, and parsley. Sounds simple enough, but then you need to break it down into the individual preparatory actions that you need to take, so it goes a little something like this:

Put the carrot card on top of the knife card to peel it, then put it on the grater card to grate it. While it’s grating, put the cabbage card on the knife card, then transfer to the grater. If you have parsley, put it on the knife card, or grow some by placing a parsley seedling card on top of the garden card. Once you’ve got some parsley and chopped it up, put the shredded carrot, shredded cabbage, and chopped parsley cards down on top of the plate card (make sure it’s clean!) and then serve to the customer. 

Believe it or not, that’s one of the easier recipes to make. 

To make matters worse, every action in Abra-Cooking-Dabra takes time. Washing a plate takes about the same time as cooking an egg, while growing some onions takes slightly longer than chopping up tomatoes or a cucumber. Not only do your actions take time, but you also only have a certain amount of time to serve each customer everything they’ve ordered before they leave unhappy. 

It’s even worse if you fail to notice that you’re missing a vital item that’s needed to make an ordered meal, and end up having to stare at the progress bar of a certain action while also worriedly watching the timer that shows how long you have before a customer leaves in a fit of hunger-fuelled rage.

Bosses be bossing

I have to admit, I wasn’t expecting too much to be different when it came to the first and only boss available to feed in the demo of Abra-Cooking-Dabra, but I was both pleasantly surprised and horrified in equal measure when I reached that point. Pleasantly surprised because it was different enough to be interesting, but horrified because it felt damn near impossible at times to get all of his requested meals made. 

Oh, and he decided to throw a chicken into the mix that also needed feeding, so it would provide me with eggs. No pressure.

It took me four tries to finally get through the boss, and I only managed it after I figured out that pausing time allows you to organize your cards without taking any time. Actions don’t complete while time is paused, obviously, but you can at least stack your cards where they need to be without panic-induced mistakes. 

One of my favorite deckbuilders

I think the thing that makes Abra-Cooking-Dabra one of my favorite upcoming deckbuilders is how much it manages to not feel like one, at least for me. I’m very used to combat-based deckbuilders that rely on cards to attack or defend, but there’s none of that here; instead, you’re simply cooking and following the recipe steps against a timer. 

As stressful as things got at times, I couldn’t help but thoroughly enjoy myself, all while glaring at the monocled moggy in the corner. 

Abra-Cooking-Dabra is still in development, although it’s set for release at some point before the end of 2025. If you want to experience everything I’ve talked about above, you can head to Steam and get the demo right now!